An exercise on Point of View - my point of view, her point of view, a third person/onlooker’s point of view, a character sketch. 

 1. I met Jenny in 1998, when we were 6 years old and in the same primary school class. Back then she had strawberry blonde hair that fell in ringlets to her shoulders, a cluster of freckles spread across her cheeks and nose, and huge blue eyes. Now, the hair is gone, hacked off in a moment of spontaneous frustration and dyed the colour of chocolate. Her freckles are hidden behind a mask of makeup. She still has huge blue eyes. 

    Jenny and I were best friends until we were 15. We knew each other right down to the core and were utterly inseparable – the thought that we might ever part seemed ridiculous. We shared everything from all of our secrets to breakfast on the weekends.  People at school would joke that we were twins who had been pawned off to different mothers, and we liked it like that.
    During our exams at school, Jenny got very sad. It clung to her like a scent, and for the first time in our lives, I couldn’t do anything about it. One day, she cut me off.  She needed to prove she could ‘live without me.’ She would ‘come back when she could’. She never came back. With no warning, she walked out of our little bubble and let it burst all over me, causing me to feel like I was walking around with only half of my body. It took a long time for it to feel like it had grown back.
    
2. I met Zoe in our second year of primary school. I sat at her table in class, and we had the same colour of shirt. She was smaller than me, but her hair was quite like mine. Now, I don’t even know what she looks like.
    Zoe was my closest friend throughout primary school and then most of secondary school. I didn’t think that I needed any other friends or any other people for that matter and I was clear about that. I wanted to keep everyone away from us – I liked to think that we were in our own little world where being best friends was all you needed to get by. We were never embarrassed around each other and spent almost every available second of free time together, laughing and sharing and moving further away from everyone.
    When it came to exam time in our fourth year of secondary school, I realised we had become like an island, and that scared me. I needed to get off of the island, and I did. I got off and I didn’t look back, I just prayed she would understand.
   
3. Jenny and Zoe met when they were 6 years old and sitting at the same tiny plastic table in their primary 2 classroom. Jenny wore a grey skirt, and Zoe always wore black.  They were in the same house group, so both wore a red polo shirt, and they both hair that could be called blonde.
    Throughout their school years their friendship grew and grew – they swapped packed lunches, held hands during circle time and made magic potions after school. By the time they were around 14, it was hard to differentiate between the two, yet, no one was copying the other – they just preferred to be one solid unit. Everyone knew not to try and break in to the unit - Jenny made it clear that she didn’t need anyone else, and Zoe felt it.
   In the spring of the year that the girls were 15, they sat their first school exams, during which Jenny began to feel a constant hopelessness. She had racked her mind and come to the conclusion that it was because of Zoe. Jenny felt too dependent on her, and decided that the only possible way to overcome such a need was to completely remove Zoe from her life as a way of proving that she could live independently.
   She walked out of the friendship with only a brief explanation, hoping that she would be forgiven. Zoe went into mourning and didn’t forgive for years.


Character Sketch

Jenny:

When you look at Jenny’s hair, you immediately assume that she sun is somewhere above bouncing it’s rays off of it – that’s how golden it is. She has real ringlets, the kind girls have in 1960’s movies, and they fall right to her collarbone. Her freckles are like tiny spots on a bird’s egg.
 In school, in the morning before classes began, she would sit on the corner of a bench in the PE department, next to the hot water pipe. Her feet were always curled beneath her, and she would have one earphone in her ear listening to songs about love. Everything about her seemed perfect – that was until she spoke.
   It was a Friday morning, and I walked up to her sitting near that pipe, keeping all of the heat to herself. Normally, I would have been greeted with a smile, a wave, or a hug, sometimes all three. That morning, she raised one of her eyebrows slightly, and then turned her cheek away from me to rest her head against the wall. She had two earphones in.
   I tapped her shoulder. “What?” she asked. I looked at her, but couldn’t read her eyes. I looked further, not knowing what to say. “Listen…” she began. I felt my insides freeze over – what had I done? Before she could tell me, the bell rang.
   Following a week of the same treatment, I received a text message from Jenny. I looked at the green glow of the letters and couldn’t understand how such a perfect girl could be delivering such heartbreak. Surely it was only imperfect people who did this? People who weren’t your best friend? The text read: “I’m sorry I’ve been so distant. I think we need to stop being friends. I need you too much and it’s not healthy. I need to see if I can manage without you. Please don’t fight it. X”
  She ignored me from that day on, and then she left school. She left everything.

- 2010